Serrano Hired

#7
#7
I'm still floored he wasnt successful here. Seemed to recruit to CA small ball instead of SEC heavy hitter baseball.

Also amazed his recruiting sucked as bad as it did. I do think if he had hired Simcox after year 1 or 2 he might have turned it around.
 
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#9
#9
Obviously, I’ll never be privy to the inner workings of the athletic department, but I just can’t figure out why Serrano wasn’t successful at Tennessee. He’s a smart, baseball guy that has won at other places.

I honestly thought Tennessee would become a beast with him at the helm. There has be something that happened that we’re not aware of.
 
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#11
#11
I think a lot of it had to do with not being able to secure the talent he was recruiting. A lot of outstanding commitments who just happened to go for the money instead of coming to college. More often than not, his highly rated recruits opted to enter the draft and go to the league instead of coming on to Tennessee. If he had secured most of the talent he was recruiting, I think we would have seen different results on the field. I remember getting excited about the talent that committed only to be disappointed when their name got called by MLB and they chose that instead of college.
 
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#13
#13
Bigun said:
I'm still floored he wasnt successful here. Seemed to recruit to CA small ball instead of SEC heavy hitter baseball.

Also amazed his recruiting sucked as bad as it did. I do think if he had hired Simcox after year 1 or 2 he might have turned it around.
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When his original recruiting guy left he was turning the team around. Simcox and Thomas built the team we just won with
 
#14
#14
Bigun said:
I'm still floored he wasnt successful here. Seemed to recruit to CA small ball instead of SEC heavy hitter baseball.

Also amazed his recruiting sucked as bad as it did. I do think if he had hired Simcox after year 1 or 2 he might have turned it around.
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His recruiting.. I think I remember his first effort lining up several really good players. But the went the way of the draft and left him in a lurch. Never seemed to recover from that failure to me. Someone may can help me here or set me straight.
 
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#16
#16
savannahfan said:
His recruiting.. I think I remember his first effort lining up several really good players. But the went the way of the draft and left him in a lurch. Never seemed to recover from that failure to me. Someone may can help me here or set me straight.
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His failure was trying to play west coach baseball. He and his new coaches were turning that around
 
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#19
#19
txbo said:
I don't think there's another coach in any sport that loved our university like Serrano did. If accomplishments are all that count however, he did get us out of APR purgatory if I remember correctly.
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that's the way I remember it too...of course, not to mention, he'd been here before for two years as pitching coach under Coach Delmonico...:D

GO BIG ORANGE!
 
#20
#20
BruinVol said:
When his original recruiting guy left he was turning the team around. Simcox and Thomas built the team we just won with
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True, however the new staff played a big role in developing the talent and without Al, Ricky and Crochet, this team would not have won 40 games
 
#21
#21
txbo said:
I don't think there's another coach in any sport that loved our university like Serrano did. If accomplishments are all that count however, he did get us out of APR purgatory if I remember correctly.
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Absolutely, Serrano loved UT and Knoxville!
 
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#25
#25
BruinVol said:
Might be a Hot take but we go to a regional this year with him as head coach and Maybe last year as well. You have to remember the heart of this team this year which was very solid was his guys.
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I'm not going to speculate one way or another on that, but if he had moved away from Bergeron for Simcox after year 2, they're in a regional in year three and likely do big things in year four when they had Stewart, AJ, etc. That was the year that they had all the weather stuff and didn't really get outside on the dirt until the third week of the season.

But the most valuable thing Serrano did to elevate the program on his way out was give Currie a long list of things that other schools in the SEC had or were doing that Tennessee was not. Most of them were travel, recruiting and other behind-the-scenes things that most people wouldn't see.

I know the context of one of those conversations was "You can fire me for my record, I can't argue with you on that, but if you don't support the next guy with X,Y, and Z, he's going to fail too." And he was right. The financial resources that Dave Hart allocated to baseball were embarrassing. He tried to neuter the softball program the same way, but was shut down by Title IX watchdogs. People can roll their eyes if they want, but I'm still mildly impressed that Serrano accomplished even what he did with the BS he had to put up with from Hart.

Currie deserves every bit of the ridicule he gets from fans for the football hire debacle (and he probably deserved to be fired over it), but he made huge strides with the rest of the department in his short time. He set up Fulmer for success by taking a completely fresh look at the resources and budgets for all the "other" sports beyond football and basketball.
 
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